February 3, 1916. 
LAND AND ^\' A T E R 
natural passion for liberty asserting itsolf — and that in 
men who have least of the agitator about them. 
A partnership of Labour and Capital in production,' 
not merely in the matter of proiits (that partnership exists 
now in a sense though it turns itself into a quarroi about 
shares) , but in the much more essential matters of respon- 
sibility and control, seems the only possible termination 
of a barren struggle of which the effects are on the material 
plane, immeasurable waste which the world can nowadays 
ill afford, and on the spiritual plane, hatreds and sus- 
picions which dissolve the essential fellowship that 
patriotism should primarily mean. 
Unquestionably the Guild Socialists and Syndicalists, 
the vanguard of self-conscious labour, by their doctrines 
and intrigues hope to effect something more than is 
either just or profitable ; as employers in their opposition 
wish to yield something less. But a problem goes some 
way to being solved, if its essentials, as distinct from its 
accidental accretions, canjje stated. On neither side of 
a quarrel do men rally to what is unjust in their cause, 
but to that which is right and just. That is a funda- 
mental truth on which all hopes of real progress are based, 
and it is a demonstrable truth, not a mere figment of 
irresponsible optimism. The paramount ideal that is 
simmering in the ranks of Labour is the spiritual idea of 
freedom. Those who wish to understand and meet the 
difficulties of the coming Labour struggle will be enor- 
mously helped by realising this. 
Timid souls, who, very reasonably, would be 
frightened of such thoughts if they met them in syndi- 
calists' journals, might very well be induced to give them 
consideration in The Devil's Devices, coming as they do 
from one who has reached his conclusions by quite un- 
exceptionable paths. An official of the L.C.C., who 
retired on grounds of conscience after discovering in the 
actual personal experience of the administration of 
ameliorative legislation that it tends to sap character 
and interfere with liberty, that it is vitiated by the fact 
that essentially it is the contrivance of one caste, the 
comfortable managers, for the improvement and control 
of another caste, the impecunious managed, has such good 
right to a hearing as experience gives over theory. If the 
somewhat disconcerting form of rather bizarre satire — 
" The Broad Road to Heaven- — a Cinema Comedy 
(Satan's Circuit) " and the like — and a certain amount 
of irrelevant fooling for the sheer fun of the thing does 
not, as it should not, affright the reader, he may be 
referred to The Devil's Devices for illuminating chapters, 
whose excellent sense could not be conveyed by means of 
paragraphs wrenched from their context. 
And now I must address myself to the challenge which 
the writer offers in his attack on the devil's devices of 
cHiciency and organisation. On this score his argument 
may be summed up not altogether unfairly in this wise. 
< icrmany is a deplorable State : Germany is highly 
efficient, superbly organised. Therefore efficiency and 
organisation are deplorable things ; and by inference 
British slackness and the habit of " not finishing things " 
is excellent. But what we need is more inefficiency and 
disorganisation for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. 
Which has only to be stated to suggest its refutation 
in terms of a middle way. The wrong things may be 
organised or the right things disorganised, or one efficiency 
(say material) may be pressed at the expense of a higher 
efficiency, the spiritual. 
* 
Organisation is but due economy of means, the 
elimination of waste. There is nothing inherently vicious 
in it. On the contrary, it is an ideal which cannot in 
itself be assailed, but only in the range and manner of 
its application. It seems a pity tlxat the author of The 
Devil's Devices should allow entirely visionary aspirations 
a place alongside his generally sane philosophy of life. 
There is an undercurrent of desire (one suspects tliat he has 
been unduly infiuenced by his craftsman illustrator) for 
a return to the pre-machine era. Now it is a quite argu- 
able (but by no means obvious) proposition that we are 
none the better for steam, the telephone, gramophone, 
rotary press, wireless, photographs, cinematographs, or 
the mechanical triumphs of the nineteenth century, be- 
cause progress is to be measured exclusively in terms of 
the spirit. But it is a wholly unprofitable thing to .sigh 
for a machinelcss age, or build aiiy hopes of spiritual 
reform upon its return. Let us face the clear fact that we 
shall neVer again have such an age. Our line of progress 
is not to abolish, but to control the machine, and it is 
certain that there is nothing inherently wicked or im- 
spiritual in the production of things by machinery. 
While the machine in industry has brought its special 
horrors, it is not difficult to prove that the general rise 
in the standard of living and the improvement of com- 
munications have given valuable gifts to humanity ; nor 
is it foolish to foresee the possibility of a day when the 
machine shall be entirely the servant of all mankind, not 
the servant of the few and the master of the many. At 
any rate, to work towards such a day is a better and a 
wiser thing than to cry for a day that is for ever gone. 
And as to the bogey of organisation. Clearly there 
are some things that must be very highly organised in a 
day of enormous cities. The apparatus of health, for 
instance, about the details of which our author is apt to be 
scornful. Sewers and dust destructors are but co-operative 
slop-emptying. They are better than the good old habits 
of the days of freedom when garbage was bestowed in 
the streets. This kind of organisation may be expected to 
be developed and rightly developed amongst us. Our 
media^valists sighing for the very old days are inclined to 
remember the pleasant sense of freedom (pleasanter in 
prospect than in fact) and forget the Black Death. 
Transport, too ; here must be scheduled times ; the 
individual whim sacrificed to the collective convenience. 
The mere complexity of our daily life calls for an amount 
of regimenting and dictation that can, perversely, be 
represented as a limitation of freedom, whereas it is rather 
a fuller freedom from the ills which the lack of such res- 
trictions would bring. Certainly in this kingdom of 
material contrivance and convenience there seems hardly 
any hmit to the proper function of organisation. It is 
certain that we have not come near to reaching that limit. 
One has heard such a proposal as that every street and 
house in a city be duly labelled and numbered in such a 
way that the street or house could be found by a stranger, 
denounced as a regrettable manifestation of the modern 
spirit of interference with personal liberty. Whereas 
no one denies that a fifty-thousand volume library 
needs a catalogue and numbered shelves. We 
should distrust the opponents of organisation and effi- 
ciency less if they admitted its efficacy where there is 
nothing but real gain. 
In the production of commodities, efficiency and 
organisation are not mere barren watchwords, or sym- 
bols of a regrettable tyranny. When Labour comes to 
its own as a responsible partner in industry it will discern 
that essential truth. It has a hard lesson to learn, for 
which it has been ill-prepared — to discipline itself. 
It is well, however, to remember the real truth at 
the back of the protests against our organisation. To 
lay organising hands on the things of the mind and the 
spirit, or to make so admirable a machine of a subject, 
whether for industry or war, as to suppress the ])uin — 
that is the great danger. It is the German danger, and 
it is no doubt the natural tendency of those among us who 
recognise the convenience of the method without recog- 
nising its hmitations. 
The convenience is obvious enough. And if there 
were any divine law which pre-supposed a set of govern- 
ing minds and another set of minds destined only to be 
directed and governed, a set of rulers on the one hand, 
and of instruments on the other, there would be little to 
say against it. 
But it is the proud discovery of our race that there 
is something in every man which gives him a right, 
balanced by the just rights of others, to control his own 
destiny. It is a doctrine not without its difficulties in 
application, but it is essentially the fundamental doctrine 
of our political creed. We are in less danger from its 
being pressed too far by some than from its being limited 
by others with a modifying clause to the effect that it is 
well for us, " the right-thinking minority to impose its 
will on the non-thinking majority." This is the doctrine 
attributed to the De\il of our author's fantasia. It is 
a just ascription 
